Sally Pendleton and her mother watched their faces keenly.
The time is up. They open the inner door reluctantly. The two doctors,
bending over their patient, look up with a smile.
"The heart still beats," they whisper. "He will live."
And this is the intelligence that is carried out to the young bride, the
words breaking in upon her in the midst of her selfish calculations.
She did not love Jay Gardiner. Any genuine passion in her breast had
been coolly nipped in the bud by his indifference, which had stung her
to the quick.
She could not make him jealous. She knew that he would have been only
too relieved if she had fallen in love with some one else, and had been
taken off his hands.
He always treated her in a cool, lordly manner--a manner that always
impressed her with his superiority. She was obliged to acknowledge him
her master; she could never make him her slave.
And now he was to live, and she was his wife. She would share his
magnificent home, all the grandeur that his position would bring to her.
She had been brought up to regard money as the one aim of existence.
Money she must have. She coveted power, and she was girl of the world
enough to know that money meant power.
"Yes, he will live; but whether he will gain his full reasoning powers
is a matter the future alone can decide," the doctors declare.
Two long months, and Doctor Gardiner is slowly convalescing. His young
wife flits about the room, a veritable dream in her dainty lace-trimmed
house-gowns, baby pink ribbons tying back her yellow curls. But he looks
away from her toward the window with a weary sigh.
He has married her, and he tells himself over and over again, that he
must make the best of it. But "making the best of it" is indeed a bitter
pill, for she is not his style of woman.
During the time he has been convalescing, he has been studying her, and
as one trait after another unfolds itself, he wonders how it will all
end.
He sees she has a passionate craving for the admiration of men. She
makes careful toilets in which to receive his friends when they call to
inquire after his health; and last, but not least, she has taken to the
wheel, and actually appears before him in bloomers.
What would his haughty old mother and his austere sister say when they
learned this?
There had been quite an argument between the young husband and Sally on
the day he received his mother's letter informing him of her return from
abroad, and her intense amazement at his hasty marriage.
"I had always hoped to persuade you to let _me_ pick out a wife for you,
Jay, my darling son," she wrote. "I can only hope you have chosen wisely
when you took the reins into your own hands. Come and make us a visit,
and bring your wife with you. We are very anxious to meet her."
Sally frowned as he read the letter aloud.
Never in the world were two united who were so unsuited to each other.
Why did the fates that are supposed to have the love affairs of mortals
in charge, allow the wrong man to marry the wrong woman?
There was one thing over which Sally was exceedingly jubilant, and that
was his loss of memory. That he had known such a person as Bernardine
Moore, the old basket-maker's beautiful daughter, was entirely
obliterated from his mind.
Some one had mentioned the great tenement-house fire in Jay Gardiner's
presence, and the fact that quite a quaint character, a tipsy
basket-maker, had lost his life therein, but the young doctor looked up
without the slightest gleam of memory drifting through his brain. Not
even when the person who was telling him the story went on to say that
the great fire accomplished one good result, however, and that was the
wiping out of the wine-house of Jasper Wilde & Son.
"Wilde--Jasper Wilde! It seems to me that I have heard that name before
in connection with some unpleasant transaction," said Doctor Gardiner,
slowly.
"Oh, no doubt. You've probably read the name in the papers connected
with some street brawl. Jasper Wilde, the son, is a well-dressed tough."
"Before going to see your mother, why not spend a few weeks at Newport
with Sally," suggested Mrs. Pendleton to the doctor. "You know she has
not been away on her wedding-trip yet."
He laughed a dry, mirthless laugh.
"She can go if she likes," he replied. "I can endure it."
Mrs. Pendleton bit her lip to keep back the angry retort, but wisely
made no reply.
"It will never do to have the least disagreement with my wealthy,
haughty son-in-law, if I can help it," she said to herself. "Especially
as my husband is in such sore straits, and may have to come to him for a
loan any day."
The following week Jay Gardiner and his bride reached Newport. The
season was at its height. Yachts crowded the harbor; the hotels were
filled to overflowing; every one who intended going to Newport was there
now, and all seemed carried away on the eddying current of pleasure.
Young Mrs. Gardiner--_nee_ the pretty Sally Pendleton--plunged into the
vortex of pleasure, and if her greed for admiration was not satisfied
with the attention she received, it never would be.
Young Mrs. Gardiner knew no restraint. Her society was everywhere sought
after. She was courted in every direction, and she took it all as her
just due, by virtue of her marriage with the handsome millionaire, whom
all the married belles were envying her, sighing to one another:
"Oh! how handsome he is--how elegant! and what a lordly manner he has!
But, best of all, he lets his wife do just as she pleases."
But the older and wiser ones shook their heads sagaciously, declaring
they scented danger afar off.
Little did they dream that the terrible calamity was nearer than they
had anticipated.